Describing students with disabilities as presenting "challenging behavior" is common in US schools. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the discourse utilized by teachers in order to understand their beliefs and practices surrounding young students considered to present challenging behavior. This study examines teachers' language in…

This paper reports on a four-year research project examining the experiences of children with dyslexia in mainstream schools and reading schools/classes. The focus of this paper is on the socio-emotional effects of dyslexia on a group of children attending a reading school/class for a specific duration before returning to mainstream. The findings…

Background: Researchers in numerous disciplines have investigated the effects of the school environment on childhood obesity (CHO), one of the greatest current health concerns in the United States. There is a gap in current empirical evidence, however, on school personnel's perspectives of this issue. This study examined school personnel's…

Cyber counseling is a new and growing medium for offering mental health services to children and youth. However, there is a lack of identification of the core competencies required to provide effective online counseling. A school of social work, in partnership with a national service agency providing online counseling to children and youth,…

This study focuses on the perceptions and professional practice of Black and White teachers in a high poverty, predominately Latino elementary school in the suburban US South. The investigation explored how successful practitioners negotiated student disciplinary concerns within their classrooms. Race and gender gaps were documented in three of…

A major criticism of the Community of Practice theory is that it mainly focuses on the inward induction process of learning while neglecting the outbound trajectory. Yet, this criticism still remains at the hypothetical level in most of the literature. This paper aims to advance the theory by addressing this criticism on an empirical basis. The…

This study aims to explore the shifting roles of Standard English and World Englishes in the identity construction process of EFL learners. This was a qualitative study of two Taiwanese EFL undergraduate students in Taiwan, which synthesized the data from (1) three semi-structured interviews, (2) field notes, (3) an opinion survey, and (4) the…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine teachers' perceptions about struggling readers who do not qualify for special services, their perceptions of these students' ability to learn to read, and their perceptions of their ability to instruct these students in their general education classrooms. Participants for this study were eight…

Teacher quality has become a critical area of concern in Vietnamese education. Recently, new professional standards for teachers in secondary schools have been developed, piloted, and implemented. This study explores the perceptions of teachers, school principals, and other administrators about the new teacher professional standards, the…

As higher education struggles to prove its ongoing relevance within the broader society in the face of increasing costs and little visible accountability, community engagement has emerged as one strategy to demonstrate that relevance. Such engagement is difficult and often messy, however, and structural differences among universities and the…

In this study, the researcher endeavored to examine Morris County, New Jersey, middle school teacher and principal perspectives on the use of technology in their classrooms and schools. Specifically, this study examined teacher engagement, implementation and limitations related to the use of technology with middle school students. This study used…

Despite the documented affordances of technology to enhance language teaching and learning, technology use does not seem to be normalized just yet. This dissertation investigates the factors that impact university-level language teachers' technology use and integration. Adopting the ecological perspective as a guiding framework, this study…

Bullying has been recognized as a significant social issue and research has shown that bullying behaviors tend to increase during the middle school years. Research trends indicate that current attention given to bullying has been influenced by public outcry against a growing number of tragic school and community-based events involving youth, many…

The Rhode Island Department of Education determined that 56% of high school juniors in public schools are not meeting mathematics performance standards. If a student is not proficient in school, then his or her ability and desire to continue education are diminished, raising the chances of drop out. Hispanic students have the highest dropout rate…

What affect does female participation in the Training Future Scientist (TFS) program based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Maslow's Hierarchies of Needs have on female adolescents' achievement levels in science and their attitude toward science and interest in science-based careers? The theoretical framework for this study was developed…